'Siri, Does My Partner Have HIV?'

Smartphone dongle offers high-tech testing for STDs

Action Points

Note that this study was published as an abstract and presented at a conference. These data and conclusions should be considered to be preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

A smartphone dongle is under development that can diagnose HIV and syphilis within minutes.

Note that 85% of the volunteers said they would be likely or very likely to use such a device in a dating context, although the smartphone dongle is still under development and would require regulatory approval before it can be used outside a clinical trial.

CHICAGO -- In an era of instant hook-ups, how can you be sure your potential partner doesn't have HIV?

There's an app for that.

A smartphone dongle is under development that can diagnose HIV and syphilis within minutes, according to Iván Balán, PhD, of the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University.

While there's a way to go before it's commercially available, such a technology would be very acceptable to groups who routinely engage in high-risk sex, Balán told reporters at the HIV Research for Prevention conference here.

Balán and colleagues have been studying how people in such groups -- specifically men who have sex with men and transgendered women who prefer sex without condoms -- try to manage their HIV risk.

Many just ask a potential partner, while others assume that a healthy appearance means the absence of HIV, Balán told MedPage Today, but neither approach is reliable.

On the other hand, a small pilot study, reported in 2012, suggested that a quick HIV test can help reduce the risk, he noted. The 27 participants in that study used the over-the-counter OraQuick oral HIV test for 3 months, during which they tested more than 100 partners, Balán said.

Of those, seven turned out to be HIV-positive (including six that were a surprise to the testee), and there were no episodes of unprotected sex with those partners, Balán said. The approach is currently being studied in a larger 300-person cohort.

The device uses a fingerstick blood sample to perform an immunoassay for HIV antibodies, a treponemal-specific antibody for syphilis, and non-treponemal antibody for active syphilis infection. It draws its power from the smartphone and delivers results in 15 minutes.

Balán was reporting here on how 104 participants in the larger OraQuick trial reacted to the idea of a smartphone test and on what they saw as its advantages and disadvantages.

Overall, he said, almost 85% of the volunteers said they would be likely or very likely to use such a device in a dating context. Many said they found the dongle interactive and easy to use and said it was likely to be more reliable than the oral swab because it uses a blood sample.

Participants also liked the idea of testing for more than one STD. Syphilis rates among such groups have been rising dramatically and have now reached an all-time high nationally, the CDC reported Wednesday.

On the other hand, participants expressed concerns about cost, accuracy, and the possibility that the device might be hacked.

And the use of blood might also be problematic, some said -- many people do not like to give blood "even a little bit," and others might fear that creating a wound before sex might increase risk.

The idea of the smartphone app is a good one, commented Sheena McCormack, MD, PhD, of the United Kingdom's Medical Research Council clinical trials unit, who moderated a media briefing at which details of the study were presented.

"It's really going to appeal to this technological generation," she told MedPage Today, "although perhaps not in the setting they described."

But much of the appeal will depend on such things as cost and accuracy, which haven't been settled yet, McCormack said.

She noted that the idea is not entirely new. Researchers at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., have been working on a smartphone app to test cholesterol levels, and of course diabetics have had stand-alone devices to test their blood sugar for decades.

A key advantage of such apps is that they give people more control over their health, McCormack said. "It's putting it in their hands -- that's what I love about it."

People who are monitoring their cholesterol are already in care, but the app under development by Balán and colleagues is aimed at people who are not under treatment. "Prevention is about reaching people who don't consider themselves as patients," McCormack said.

Balán told MedPage Today the smartphone dongle is still under development and would require regulatory approval before it can be used outside a clinical trial, adding that it is difficult to say how much it would cost.

Some of the research had support from the National Institutes of Health.

Balán said he had no disclosures; and McCormack made no disclosures.

Reviewed by Robert Jasmer, MD Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco and Dorothy Caputo, MA, BSN, RN, Nurse Planner

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